Bread. Space travel. Keeping culture alive. Games children play again.

I’ve not found a panadería near our new accommodation. So this morning I made a foray out to the Spar shop across the road and bought bread from there. Not quite as good as a small independent bakery would sell but at least it was still moderately warm when I bought it, suggesting it was freshly baked somewhere.

Space travel is taking our minds off the chaos of the world. Can the astronauts see the chaos their space capsule? I wonder. 

Here’s an animals’ eye view:

Anyway ….

“Artemis II astronauts broke Apollo 13’s distance record at 1.57pm eastern time on Monday, hugging each other in the cramped capsule as they made history for becoming the first four humans to travel the farthest from Earth.

About five hours later, at 7.02pm ET, the crew reached the furthest point in its mission, before swinging back around, at 252,756 miles from Earth – 4,111 miles farther than the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission in 1970.”

And then there is this:

I wrote about the seeming universality of children’s games yesterday. Today in this interesting article about the Navajo Nation in the USA there was a photo of “students being taught traditional Native American games in the Native American culture class at Holbrook high school.” They were playing, or learning to play, “cats’ cradle”, the suggestion being that this was a Native American invented game. 

Now, I used to play “cats’ cradle” with my friends when I was at school. As far as I know it was only the girls who played “cats’ cradle”, never the boys. I also played it with my older sister. She was very good at it and knew all sorts of complicated ways of weaving the string between our fingers to make know patterns which could be turned upside down to resemble an actual cradle. (She was very good at all those things: doing handstands, ‘running in’ when communal skipping went on with a long rope and a ‘turner’ at each end, fancy individual skipping. In her teens she was also an excellent jive dancer! Much more proficient at all those things than I was.)

And it seems to be another universal activity. Wikipedia tells me this:

“Different cultures have different names for the game, and often different names for the individual figures. The French word for manger is crèche, and cattle feed racks are still known as cratches. In  Japan, it is called ayatori (あやとり). In Korea, it is called sil-tteu-gi. In Russia, the whole game is called simply the game of string, and the diamonds pattern is called carpet, with other pattern names such as field, fish, and sawhorse for the other figures—a cat isn't mentioned. The game may have originated in China. In China, the game is called 翻繩; fan sheng; 'turning rope'. In Israel, the game is called "Knitting Grandmother" In some regions of the US, this game also is known as Jack in the Pulpit.”

Here is a picture of girls playing the game in Japan.

Amazing! 

At our youngest grandchildren’s primary school they still have hopscotch grids painted on the playground and I believe they teach them the old playground games. But in my childhood we simply chalked the hopscotch grid on the flagstones, in the playground and on the pavement outside our houses. The games went in seasons as well. At one point everyone had string for “cat’s cradle’, replaced suddenly by skipping ropes, replaced in turn by whip and top, and organised group games like “What time is it Mr Wolf?” and other such creeping up on someone games.  How many of them  them are remembered now?

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!